Booting from an eSATA Drive

Q: Can I boot from an eSATA drive? What I want to do, and have been unsuccessful at so far, is boot a laptop through a USB/eSATA combo port. Can I do this? I want to run Vista Home Premium (64-bit) from the laptop's hard drive but also from an eSATA drive, so that one boot setup can be for testing and the other for keeps.

I e-mailed HP tech support and was told I couldn't do it, but I would like to know if that's really true. It just seems like it should be easy! I know I could partition the internal drive, but I'd rather keep the setups on separate hard drives if I can.Roger Umstott

A: It's unlikely this will work, but it's possible if your system can boot from a USB device, and there's a way to find out that much, at least. But a word of warning: If it does work, it will be very slow.

Many laptops lack the capability to boot from a USB device. You can find out if your system can do so by getting into the system BIOS. This is typically done by pressing a function key (usually F2 or F10) or the Delete key when you first boot the system. You'll need to navigate through the BIOS setup options to the boot settings menu. Do you see an option that allows you to boot from USB? There's your answer.

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